Richard and his knights could not have been shipwrecked in a more dangerous place; the ship was driven ashore in the territory of Duke Leopold, whose banner Richard had ordered torn down at Acre. Leopold was the nephew of Conrad of Montferrat, who was believed in these parts to have been murdered by Richard, and Leopold’s overlord was the Emperor, Henry VI, who was at odds with Richard over his support for his enemy, Tancred of Sicily. Richard and his knights dressed as pilgrims to avoid drawing attention to themselves, but after some harum-scarum adventures, Richard was recognised in a tavern and arrested on the 21st of December by Leopold’s men and held in the Castle of Dürnstein on the Danube, in what is now Austria. Large sections of the ruined castle still stand. Leopold wrote to the emperor: ‘We know that this news will bring you great happiness.’ It was in Castle Dürnstein, legend relates, that Blondel, Richard’s troubadour, found his master by singing familiar songs loudly outside various castles, until Richard heard him and joined in.
The news of Richard’s capture travelled fast around Europe. Philip was thrilled: he reminded Leopold that Richard had set the Assassins on Conrad of Montferrat. But many people were outraged that a Crusader king should have been arrested on his way home after retaking Acre and the coastal castles and towns and routing Saladin.
I am keen to find out just what happened to this ghost ship, the former
Frankenef
. There is no name for it on record. Hubert Walter, the man in charge of the negotiations with Saladin, arrived in Sicily from the Holy Land. There he heard that Richard had been seized; the chronicles show that he set off for Rome to supplicate of the Pope, who excommunicated Leopold, and then he hurried to his master’s side. They met, talked, no doubt, about the True Cross before Hubert Walter set off for England to raise the huge ransom that was now being demanded by Henry VI and Leopold – 100,000 marks, two hundred hostages and the delivery of twenty war galleys. As Emperor, Henry had the ultimate right to receive the ransom. Complicated negotiations finally resulted in Richard being transferred into the imperial custody at Trifels in the south-west of Germany. He was to stay in the area for eighteen months as bids and counter-bids were made for him.
The ever-faithful Hubert Walter set off for London. He took with him letters to Eleanor, Richard’s mother, and his brother John. The letter to Eleanor about Hubert Walter is evidence that she had a very strong hand in the governance of England:
To secure our release he has expended his efforts and his money in the Roman Curia and has made a long and dangerous journey to us in Germany. We know full well his loyalty and constant love for us, and he is now working on the Emperor and the nobles of the empire for our deliverance with affection and efficacy.
Walter was given special powers as Regent; his duties included subduing the rebellions stirred up by John in England and in Richard’s Continental empire; he was to stiffen the resistance to Philip, who was threatening Normandy. Both Philip and John wanted, for obvious reasons, to keep Richard in jail as long as possible, ideally for ever.
Richard’s trust in Walter was total. To survive in this charnel house, you needed trusted and loyal friends. He was not only Regent but soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He was Richard’s Thomas à Becket, without the tragic ending.
A report suggests that the
Frankenef
, as we will still call it, set sail for Marseilles. Unknown to the knights on board accompanying the cross, Philip’s armies had taken some of the border castles of Normandy and were closing in on Rouen. It would be dangerous for them to travel to the north with their precious cargo.
On 21 March 1193 Richard was tried in the emperor’s court. Theoretically the outcome could have been death for the murder of Conrad and for betraying the Holy Land by dealing with Saladin, but in reality this was a show trial, as the terms of the ransom were already settled and Hubert Walter and Eleanor were busily raising taxes to pay it. The trial itself was a triumph for Richard. His eloquence and calm and his account of his achievements in the Holy Land were well received. Taking the cross was still a mystic and noble cause, and Richard had defeated Saladin and had led from the front. He proclaimed, ‘I am born of a rank which recognises no superior but God’, and many people would have accepted this judgement.
One chronicler, Philip’s court poet, wrote:
When Richard replied he spoke in so lionhearted a manner that it was as though he had forgotten where he was and the undignified circumstances in which he had been captured and imagined himself to be seated on the throne of his ancestors at Lincoln and at Caen.
The Emperor, moved by his words and his demeanour, gave him the kiss of peace, although he was not to be released for another eleven months. In the meanwhile Richard occupied himself with matters of state, sending a stream of messengers to England. Most significantly, he ordered his council to proclaim Hubert Walter Archbishop of Canterbury: from Castle Trifels, in Speyer, Richard sent a message to his council in England, which gave it no choice:
The whole world knows to what pains and perils the venerable Hubert, Bishop of Salisbury, exposed himself and his men in the land overseas for the sake of God’s name and the relief of the East, and how many services pleasing to God and Christendom and ourselves. And since we have ample experience of the Bishop’s discretion, loyalty, and constancy and of the sincere love he bears us, we wish to promote him to the Church of Canterbury. Therefore we command you and firmly ordain that you hasten his appointment with all speed. For we are sure that it will be pleasing and acceptable to God and men. It is most necessary for speeding our release, defending our country and preserving peace, and, with God’s aid, it will be very profitable to you all. Myself as witness, at Speyer, 30 March.
On 29 May 1193, Hubert Walter was installed as Archbishop of Canterbury. On the 8th of June, Richard smuggled another letter to his mother, apparently unaware that Walter was already Archbishop:
Whatever I have written or may write in the future about this business it is our fixed and unchangeable wish that the Bishop of Salisbury be promoted to the Church of Canterbury. We want this and nothing else. Myself as witness, at Worms, 8 June.
Richard shared with Hubert Walter a deep friendship, a friendship forged in battle in the Holy Land; he trusted him completely. And it was Hubert Walter who negotiated the destruction of Ascalon in return for the delivery of the True Cross after Richard had spent a fortune restoring Ascalon. But the True Cross was worth any amount of gold.
In captivity Richard wrote a song in Occitan which expressed his deep bitterness at his betrayal. The rhyme scheme and the repetition of phrases and words are in the tradition of Poitou. Richard is acknowledged as an accomplished troubadour in that tradition. His grandfather, Duke William of Aquitaine, was the first known troubadour. Richard was familiar with the codes of chivalry and courtly love of his mother’s native land.
I
Ja nus hons pris ne dira sa raison
Adroitement, se dolantement non;
Mais par effort puet il faire chançon.
Mout ai amis, mais povre sont li don;
Honte i avront se por ma reançon
—Sui ça deus yvers pris.
II
Ce sevent bien mi home et mi baron–
Ynglois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon–
Que je n’ai nul si povre compaignon
Que je lessaisse por avoir en prison;
Je nou di mie por nule retraçon,
—Mais encor sui [je] pris.
III
Or sai je bien de voir certeinnement
Que morz ne pris n’a ami ne parent,
Q
uant on me faut por or ne por argent.
Mout m’est de moi, mes plus m’est de ma gent,
Qu’après ma mort avront reprochement
—Se longuement sui pris.
I
No prisoner can speak truthfully
Unless he speaks as one who has suffered injustice;
To console himself he may compose a song.
I have many friends, but they have fowled me.
They will be shamed if I am confined for the ransom
—For another year.
II
They know full well, my barons and my men,
Of Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou,
That I have never had a vassal
Whom I leave in prison for my own gain;
I say it not as a reproach to them,
—But a prisoner I am!
III
The ancient proverb now I know for sure;
Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie,
Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie.
I grieve greatly for myself; for them still more.
After my death they will be tainted for ever
—If I am a prisoner long.
It is the story of his betrayal in a fickle and shifting world. He was deeply affected by this disloyalty.
Walter travelled from England to Normandy and on to Poitiers. I have been making charts of all his and Richard’s movements. They cover one whole wall of my cramped bedroom in Ed’s house. As I colour the journeys and revise the information endlessly, my charts look like the contents of my aunt’s knitting basket. Walter’s well-documented journey south, as far as Limousin, suggests that his aim was to meet the knights escorting the cross. I have established that when Richard took to the galleys, Huntingdon, Roger de Saci, Hugh de Neville, Raoul de Mauléon, Gerard de Furnival, and Master Robert, the clerk, were ordered to stay on the
Frankenef
to deliver the cross.
I have decided to say nothing about the letter to Saladin for the moment. After all, nobody has taken any notice for nearly a hundred years. The description of the contents is sketchy, handwritten in about 1895 by one of the Huntingdon family, I would guess. The truth is I don’t want anyone else to see the document. I know that I have no excuse for keeping secret a valuable document from this venerable library. I will announce its discovery when I am ready.
I have hidden the letter in a neglected box. Its label reads:
Domestic Accounts of the Bishop of Winchester 1186–1199
. It’s easy to become secretive; while I am down here in the stacks. I am not aware of the outside world or what’s going on there. I am like a mole burrowing blindly through old tunnels. The second Huntingdon box contains a copy of a letter, sent by Walter in November 1192, just about the time Huntingdon and Richard and the knights were embarking in Acre, clearly stating that Master Robert is to use the money they have been entrusted with for the holy cause.
Causus sacris
. And the knights are exhorted:
Crux sancta sit vestra lux – Let the Holy Cross be your light
.
What would Master Robert have done with the equivalent of £100,000? It was probably intended for bribery and to buy horses for the knights; it may also have been to pay off the crew of the so-called
Frankenef
when the knights disembarked for their journey to Rouen, via Arles. I see Master Robert as a sensible fellow, an administrator, a bean counter, a little scared of the knights, and perhaps just a little humble too. Huntingdon appears to have been an exceptionally resolute knight. He was also immune to disease. This was attributed to his blameless life.
North of Arles there would be pockets of trouble with armed soldiers and mercenaries along the road, subjects of various warring noblemen, trying to extort money or goods.
By the summer of 1193 the whole of Europe knew that Richard was to be released. Philip sent a premature message to John, Richard’s treacherous brother:
Look to yourself – the devil is loose.
While there was still time, Philip and John were securing as many towns and castles as they could in Normandy and fomenting rebellion further south. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for the small group of knights bearing the Holy Cross to get to Rouen. There was a very real possibility that Philip would soon take the city.
It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for the group of knights bearing the Holy Cross to reach Rouen. Anyway, I have looked through the cathedral’s records online for that time, and there is no mention of a treasure or a relic arriving at the soaring, beautiful cathedral of Rouen, now sanctified by the wonderful and ethereal paintings of Monet. It is difficult to imagine what the world was like when Gothic Cathedrals were young. Rouen was one of the earliest, modelled on St-Denis in Paris, and greatly admired by Richard.
Assuming that Hubert Walter headed that way for a purpose, I would guess that the Cross was left in Limousin, near Limoges. I picture a small group of knights crossing the River Dordogne or the Lot to find the devastation of war and the bewilderingly changed alliances which had happened while they were on Crusade with Richard. I see them deciding to hide the cross and to travel because it would be dangerous to go on beyond Limousin. I try to imagine the turmoil that was in their hearts. They believed absolutely that this was the Cross on which Christ was crucified. Their king had charged them with returning it to Christendom; before jumping into the galley, he reminded the knights – was Master Robert excluded? – of their sacred duty. I search online the records of Hubert Walter both in Salisbury and Canterbury for some further mention or letter, but I can find nothing that provides a clue to where the cross was hidden.